The Maine Maritime Academy tugboat Pentagoet, seen here from the shore of Sandy Point Beach in the Waldo County town of Stockton Springs as it passes Odom Ledge off Verona Island, tows a floating wind turbine named VolturnUS 1:8 down the Penobscot River Sunday afternoon.

CASTINE — A wind turbine named VolturnUS 1:8 floated down the Penobscot River Sunday afternoon.

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The turbine, a one-eighth scale prototype developed by the University of Maine-led DeepCwind Consortium, will be anchored off Castine for the month of June, connected to the electric grid and generating electricity. Later this summer, it will be taken to Monhegan, where it will be used to gather data about wind speed and wave height. It will return to Castine later this year for an extended anchorage off Dyce Head.

The turbine was launched on Friday at the Cianbro facility in Brewer. Its developers tout it as “the first grid-connected offshore wind turbine to be deployed off the coast of North America.”

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